A £1m contract aims to digitise the booking of 25,000 interviews each year between the Home Office and asylum seekers
Credit: David Pearson
The Home Office has signed a £1m deal to take a digital booking tool for asylum appointments from its current beta phase through to full implementation.
The beta version was developed by a project team of civil servants and external contractors as part of a Home Office programme to improve asylum operations and save staff time.
Under the new contract, responsibility for the booking tool will shift to Reading-based firm Mastek. However, the company will need to work with members of the existing project team until 31 August 2022, when its contract ends.
Each year the Home Office schedules more than 25,000 interviews with people seeking asylum in the UK.
For asylum seekers, this is a potentially life-changing event. During the interview, they have an opportunity to provide details of their claim for asylum to a caseworker who will make a decision about their future.
Every one of these interviews involves numerous resources, including staff time. The administrative input to arrange each interview is in itself significant.
But the Home Office says that interviews are often cancelled, moved or have to be rebooked because of applicant no-shows. This process is again time-consuming and must be tracked and managed.
The idea behind the booking tool is that it can be accessed through a user interface, or through other systems, to request the automated booking of slots.
Most users will be Home Office asylum administration staff who work across the UK to manage the scheduling process. In addition, a wider group of caseworkers will be able to use the tool to view and check diaries and accept interviews.
The completed version of the booking tool will be deployed to a Home Office managed AWS-based cloud platform. It could also be integrated with hosted SaaS services running outside of Home Office.
hello there and thank you for your information ?I抳e definitely picked up anything new from right here. I did however expertise some technical issues using this website, since I experienced to reload the site lots of times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your web hosting is OK? Not that I am complaining, but slow loading instances times will often affect your placement in google and can damage your high-quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords. Well I抦 adding this RSS to my email and can look out for much more of your respective interesting content. Ensure that you update this again soon..
Thanks for these guidelines. One thing I also believe is credit cards providing a 0 apr often appeal to consumers with zero rate of interest, instant endorsement and easy on-line balance transfers, nevertheless beware of the top factor that will void your own 0 easy streets annual percentage rate and throw anybody out into the poor house rapid.
Good day! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading through this post reminds me of my previous room mate! He always kept chatting about this. I will forward this post to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Many thanks for sharing!